The carbon emissions of the largest public cloud vendors are set to become one of the top three cloud purchase decision criteria by 2025, according to research from Gartner.

The analyst house said over 90 per cent of companies have increased their investments in sustainability programs since the start of the pandemic, compared to its figures from 2017.

The top 10 largest cloud providers - ranked by revenue - accounted for 70 per cent of all IT spending on cloud infrastructure, platform, and application services according to Gartner.

In addition, the firm predicted that sustainability initiatives will begin with the largest cloud providers, which are some of the world’s biggest data centre operators and which it said will be critical to reducing IT-related carbon emissions.

“Leading providers of cloud infrastructure and platform services are increasingly focusing on how they can disrupt higher-level business, compliance, societal, and environmental issues,” said Ed Anderson, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “Hyperscalers are aggressively investing in sustainable cloud operations and delivery, aspiring to eventually achieve net zero emissions within the decade, or sooner.”

He added: “Gartner expects increased availability of tools that help organisations calculate and reduce their carbon emissions through effective use of cloud services, like tools that assist in optimising cloud spending today.”

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